Artist Michael Craig-Martin Brings Whimsy to Chatsworth House

The manicured gardens and stately halls of Chatsworth House, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, just got a little irreverent. This season, Irish artist Michael Craig-Martin has installed a new set of sculptures on the manor grounds, simple steel works that trace the outlines of objects like discarded umbrellas, a wheelbarrow, and gardening tools. While the objects themselves may be ordinary, their form and scale are anything but. A high-heeled shoe looms large over the immaculate south lawn, brazenly neon and playful against the flawless landscaping. Among the hedges and columns leans a tall pink pitchfork, stuck in the ground as if left by a giant groundskeeper.

Inside the residence, Craig-Martin pays homage to the building's history by curating a selection of portraits from Chatsworth’s private collection, among them drawings by Hans Holbein, a favorite of 16th-century aristocrats and royalty. But Craig-Martin’s cheeky charm is still present in a gallery of classical statues, where the artist swapped the sculptures’ traditional plinths for bright pink blocks.

Craig-Martin’s aesthetic takeover of Chatsworth House is the most recent in a series of installations by visiting artists, with the late Anthony Caro and William Turnbull having shown their work on the grounds in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Far from undermining the storied legacy of the estate, these exhibitions reaffirm Pop and contemporary art as vital components of British history.